Line Input vs DI Box?

[Staticbuster]

This may be a dumb question, but here goes....

For many years I've been running my bass and acoustic guitars into the line input of my little 12 channel mixing board which feeds into the soundcard of my computer.

I just started wondering today, should I be using a DI box in the chain, or is there no purpose in doing so?

Sonically, things sound fine for what I'm doing, which is just making demos of my songs. I'm not trying to make records.

Just wondering.

[Jahn]

nah, you're fine.

[Staticbuster]

Thanks man. I was starting to think I wasn't going to get any answer at all...

[TimmyP]

Any instrument that does not have a preamp will suffer sonically owing to pickup loading when fed into a line input. A guitar amp's input impedance is typically 250k Ohms or more. A line input is typically 10K. An active DI should be used with a passive instrument. If the pickup is a piezo (and the instrument has no preamp), the DI should have an input impedance of at least 1M Ohm.